0%

18-letter words containing s, n, i, v, e

  • preservation order — In Britain, a preservation order is an official order that makes it illegal for anyone to alter or destroy something such as an old building or an area of countryside.
  • priority inversion — (parallel)   The state of a concurrent system where a high priority task is waiting for a low priority task which is waiting for a medium priority task. The system may become unstable and crash under these circumstances. In an operating system that uses multiple tasks, each task (or context) may be given a priority. These priorities help the scheduler decide which task to run next. Consider tasks, L, M, and H, with priorities Low, Medium, and High. M is running and H is blocked waiting for some resource that is held by L. So long as any task with a priority higher than L is runable, it will prevent task L, and thus task H, from running. Priority inversion is generally considered either as a high-level design failure or an implementation issue to be taken into account depending on who is talking. Most operating systems have methods in place to prevent or take inversion into account. Priority inheritance is one method. The most public instance of priority inversion is the repeated 'fail-safe' rebooting of the Mars Pathfinder. base station ('Sagan Memorial Station').
  • private enterprise — free enterprise (def 1).
  • progressive coding — (graphics, file format, algorithm)   (Or "interlacing") An aspect of a graphics storage format or transmission algorithm that treats bitmap image data non-sequentially in such a way that later data adds progressively greater resolution to an already full-size image. This contrasts with sequential coding. Progressive coding is useful when an image is being sent across a slow communications channel, such as the Internet, as the low-resolution image may be sufficient to allow the user to decide not to wait for the rest of the file to be received. In an interlaced GIF89 image, the pixels in a row are stored sequentially but the rows are stored in interlaced order, e.g. 0, 8, 4, 12, 2, 6, 8, 10, 14, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15. Each vertical scan adds rows in the middle of the gaps left by the previous one. Interlacing is also supported by other formats. JPEG supports a functionally similar concept known as Progressive JPEG. [How does the algorithm differ?] See also progressive/sequential coding.
  • progressive dinner — a dinner party in which each successive course is prepared and eaten at the residence of a different participant.
  • provision merchant — a person or company in the business of retailing food and other provisions
  • puvis de chavannes — Puvis de [py-vee duh] /püˈvi də/ (Show IPA), Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre.
  • quantity surveying — the action or profession of a person who estimates the cost of the materials and labour necessary for a construction job
  • queen's university — A Canadian University. Source of GVL, NIAL, Pasqual, Q'NIAL and TXL.
  • recursive function — a function defined in terms of the repeated application of a number of simpler functions to their own values, by specifying a base clause and a recursion formula
  • reduction division — the first division of meiosis in which the number of chromosomes is reduced to half the original number.
  • representativeness — a person or thing that represents another or others.
  • research-intensive — focusing financial and other resources on research and development as opposed to capital and labor; noting or pertaining to a high ratio of expenditure on research in relation to the value of net output.
  • reversionary bonus — a bonus added to the sum payable on death or at the maturity of a with-profits assurance policy
  • revolutionary wars — American Revolution.
  • russian revolution — Also called February Revolution. the uprising in Russia in March, 1917 (February Old Style), in which the Czarist government collapsed and a provisional government was established.
  • saint vitus' dance — chorea (def 2).
  • school-leaving age — the minimum age that children are legally allowed to leave school - in Britain and the United States, this is 16
  • seasonal variation — season-related variation
  • second triumvirate — the coalition and joint rule of the Roman Empire by Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian, begun in 43 bc
  • secondary deviance — deviant behavior that results from being publicly labeled as deviant and treated as an outsider.
  • selective abortion — the aborting of particular embryos for medical or social reasons
  • selective breeding — the raising of animals with particular genetic traits through careful choice of parents
  • self-advertisement — a paid announcement, as of goods for sale, in newspapers or magazines, on radio or television, etc.
  • service department — a repair shop
  • sesto san giovanni — a city in Lombardy, N Italy: a suburb of Milan.
  • significance level — (in the statistical test of a hypothesis) the maximum probability of a Type I error for all distributions consistent with the null hypothesis.
  • silvery cinquefoil — any of several plants belonging to the genus Potentilla, of the rose family, having yellow, red, or white five-petaled flowers, as P. reptans (creeping cinquefoil) of the Old World, or P. argentea (silvery cinquefoil) of North America.
  • silvery spleenwort — a fern, Diplazium pycnocarpon, of eastern North America, having fronds from 20 to 30 inches (50.8 to 76.2 cm) long on yellowish-green stalks.
  • simone de beauvoir — Simone [see-mawn] /siˈmɔn/ (Show IPA), (Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand) 1908–86, French playwright, novelist, and essayist.
  • slobodan milosevicSlobodan [sloh-buh-dain] /ˈsloʊ bəˌdɛən/ (Show IPA), 1941–2006, Yugoslav and Serbian politician: president of Serbia 1989–97, president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 1997–2000, accused of war crimes 2001.
  • social environment — the environment developed by humans as contrasted with the natural environment; society as a whole, especially in its relation to the individual.
  • solvent extraction — Solvent extraction is the separation of a particular substance from a mixture by dissolving that substance in a solvent that will dissolve it, but which will not dissolve any other substance in the mixture.
  • st. lawrence river — a river in SE Canada, flowing NE from Lake Ontario, forming part of the boundary between New York and Ontario, and emptying into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 760 miles (1225 km) long.
  • standard deviation — a measure of dispersion in a frequency distribution, equal to the square root of the mean of the squares of the deviations from the arithmetic mean of the distribution.
  • stick-to-itiveness — persistence, tenacity
  • strong derived set — the set of all strong accumulation points of a given set.
  • superior vena cava — See under vena cava.
  • survival mechanism — something you or your body does automatically, in order to survive in a dangerous or unpleasant situation
  • symbolist movement — a movement beginning in French and Belgian poetry towards the end of the 19th century with the verse of Mallarmé, Valéry, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Maeterlinck, and others, and seeking to express states of mind rather than objective reality by making use of the power of words and images to suggest as well as denote
  • synthetic division — a simplified procedure for dividing a polynomial by a linear polynomial.
  • tardive dyskinesia — a disorder characterized by restlessness and involuntary rolling of the tongue or twitching of the face, trunk, or limbs, usually occurring as a complication of long-term therapy with antipsychotic drugs.
  • technical reserves — Technical reserves are amounts of money set aside to pay for underwriting liabilities.
  • teleobjective lens — telephoto lens.
  • television cabinet — a cabinet on which a television set is placed or in which it is encased
  • television company — a company that broadcasts programmes by television
  • television licence — a certificate giving official permission to own a television set
  • television station — station (def 8).
  • the movie industry — the industry that makes entertainment films or movies
  • thomas alva edison — Thomas Alva [al-vuh] /ˈæl və/ (Show IPA), 1847–1931, U.S. inventor, especially of electrical devices.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?